Ferrite
Markdown editor in Rust with native Mermaid diagram rendering
Details
- External ID
- 46571980
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- Ferrite
- Website domain
- github.com
- Launched
- Jan. 11, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 241
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.9710144927536232
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
Description
Ferrite: Fast Markdown/Text/Code editor in Rust with native Mermaid diagramsBuilt a Markdown editor using Rust + egui. v0.2.1 just dropped with major Mermaid improvements:→ Native Mermaid diagrams - Flowcharts, sequence, state, ER, git graphs - pure Rust, no JS→ Split view - Raw + rendered side-by-side with sync scrolling→ Syntax highlighting - 40+ languages with large file optimization→ JSON/YAML/TOML tree viewer - Structured editing with expand/collapse→ Git integration - File tree shows modified/staged/untracked statusAlso: minimap, zen mode, auto-save, session restore, code folding indicators.~15MB binary, instant startup. Windows/Linux/macOS.GitHub: https://github.com/OlaProeis/Ferritev0.2.2 coming soon with performance improvements for large files. Looking for feedback!
Enrichment
- Theme
- markdown editors and writing tools
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Dev tools
- Audience
- Developer
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Commercial product
- Normalized one-liner
- markdown editor with diagram rendering
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
No Writing a native Mermaid parser and layout/rendering engine from scratch in pure Rust without JavaScript or webviews requires complex compiler and graph-layout algorithm expertise.
What it would actually take: Building this requires implementing a full parsing pipeline for the various Mermaid grammar sub-languages (flowcharts, sequence diagrams, ER diagrams) combined with graph layout algorithms (such as Sugiyama-style hierarchical layout or force-directed placement). The stack would be Rust with egui and custom 2D vector geometry rendering pipelines. Specialized knowledge of formal grammars, graph layout mathematics, and low-level GUI rendering is essential.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: draw.io/Excalidraw, Diagrams-as-code Python library, D2, Mermaid.js
Concerns raised: AI-generated code lacks transparency and learning context vs human-written code, Mermaid lacks AWS architecture diagram icons and patterns, Mermaid's declarative layout is hard to manually control for visual thinking
Feature requests: Manual node positioning/drag-and-drop while keeping diagram-as-code for version control, AWS icons and architecture diagram support, Layout hints/constraints syntax to influence diagram positioning, Custom icon/shape support for different architecture types, Highlight no-login demo requirement more prominently in README
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 238 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #9 of 239 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 69 days after the earliest competitor.
- Visimer · hn · 2026-08-17 · 17 upvotes · similarity 0.63
- Line9 · hn · 2026-08-06 · 87 upvotes · similarity 0.63
- Mmdr · hn · 2026-02-04 · 47 upvotes · similarity 0.61
- Markdown Prism · hn · 2026-02-14 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.55
- Arialine · ph · 2026-09-30 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- Quikdown · hn · 2026-06-21 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- Beautiful Markdown rendering in your terminal · hn · 2026-09-11 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- Vloam Mermaid · ph · 2026-09-15 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.46
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
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